Trump In His Book: A Wharton Degree Doesn't Prove Much

Trump said on Saturday that Rubio isn't smart enough to get into Wharton. Here's what Trump wrote in 1987: "Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Wharton was not to be overly impressed by academic credentials."

Speaking in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Saturday, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump attacked Marco Rubio's intelligence, saying he couldn't be a student at Penn's Wharton School of Finance.

"So I went to the Wharton School of Finance, which is considered the best business school okay, got to be very smart to get into that school, very smart," said Trump on Saturday. "The Rubios of the world could not get into that school, believe me. They don't have the capacity. Actually Cruz could, in all fairness, Cruz could. I don't know if he has the temperament. I think neither had the temperament, but academically certainly. But, I go to Wharton, I'm smart, you're smart but you don't have to be smart."

Trump attended Wharton for two years after transferring from Fordham University. In public appearances and speeches in recent years, he has used the undergraduate degree as proof of his business bonafides.

Yet in his most-famous book, The Art of the Deal, Trump said he thought a Wharton degree, in his opinion, didn't "prove very much."

"Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Wharton was not to be overly impressed by academic credentials," wrote Trump in his 1987 bestseller. "It didn't take me long to realize that there was nothing particularly awesome or exceptional about my classmates, and that I could compete with them just fine. The other important thing I got from Wharton was a Wharton degree. In my opinion, that degree doesn't prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it's considered very prestigious. So all things considered, I'm glad I went to Wharton."

Andrew Kaczynski is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.